As of 1 February, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission’s updated High Intensity Support Skills Descriptors have come into effect. The updates were designed to improve the quality of care for NDIS participants.
There are no new skill descriptors; rather, the current ones have been amended to be more reflective of person-centred practices.
Let’s break down the revised High Intensity Skills Descriptors.
These skills descriptors provide a clear framework for the skills and knowledge required to provide high-quality support to individuals with complex needs.
They cover a range of areas, including communication, behaviour support, and medical care. Under the NDIS, service providers must ensure support workers can satisfy the requirements of the skill descriptors to have the necessary expertise and provide effective person-centred care.
The skill descriptors have a heightened focus on participant engagement and control regarding their support.
With the new changes, there is a stronger emphasis on support workers maintaining their currency of skills and knowledge.
In short, service providers must ensure that their support workers maintain their skills and knowledge and that they are up-to-date and reflect industry standards. This is particularly relevant if a participant’s support plan changes or if there is a change of support workers.
Service providers should therefore provide support workers with periodic reassessment and refresher disability awareness training. It also means that service providers must document this training, as it is subject to their three-year and mid-term audits.
With all these changes, the question remains: how do I comply with the High Intensity Support Skill Descriptors?
etrainu’s Complex Care Essentials helps you do just that. We developed this suite of courses in partnership with Essential Skills Training and Recruitment, which provides accredited and non-accredited training to the community services sectors.
The Complex Care Essentials eLearning library is a comprehensive resource designed for healthcare professionals and service providers and mapped to the NDIS High Intensity Support Skill Descriptors. Through our courses, you can gain or improve your knowledge and skills in caring for patients with complex needs.
It is also mapped to 23 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points via the Nursing and Midwifery CPD requirements, making it an efficient and effective way for healthcare professionals to meet their ongoing professional development requirements.
Additionally, we offer our Complex Care Refresher Training so that you can maintain your currency of knowledge and skills.
If you want to read more about the revised High Intensity Support Skills Descriptors, the NDIS Commission has published an FAQ document.
Overall, these updates are an important step forward in improving the quality of care for NDIS participants with complex needs.
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